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In the beginning of World War II, Japan was a small country that had joined the Axis side along with Nazi Germany. They held many islands captive, and went on to claim most of the pacific, even going as far as the Philippines and Indonesia. During the war, Japan captured and imprisoned thousands of American and Canadian soldiers that fought along the pacific, and put them into POW (Prisoner of War) camps, where they were forced to do hard and grueling labour tasks in the worst of conditions.

The POW camps are famous for the extremely brutal military staff, their numerous torture tactics, and the insanely bad conditions and back-breaking labour the POWs had to go through. The questions following this introduction looks more into how the POWs were treated, and what exactly happened afterward.

(Image: POWs on a cart)

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How were they treated, how was the conditions, did they follow the Geneva Convention?

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How were they treated, how was the conditions, did they follow the Geneva Convention?

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The treatment of POW's in Japan were so bad that the Dark Ages could be considered on par with their conditions. Diseases raged through the camps, like Dysentery which was practically universal with POWs, and made the captives even worse in condition than they already were. As said before, there was also brutal torturing and the horrific methods the Japanese used to kill POWs scarred thousands of captives. Some methods include live beheadings, shootings, baynoetting (using a knife at the end of a gun barrel), and even medical experimentation where they'd inject a subject with who knows what to see what happens, or did surgeries without anesthetic.

The conditions were equally horrible. In some camps situated above the mountains, POWs slept in molded and broken wooden stables, with no heating what-so-ever to combat the freezing winters. Dysentery was so rabid that POWs often laid down and even walked in their own excrements, and the captives never got medical attention unless they were nice enough, which they seemingly never were. The only attention they'd receive, aside from random beatings, is from another POW, who'd usually care and help the other. POWs in the camps often grew extremely close bonds, to survive longer against their captors, and this meant that POWs were caring for eachother if need be. They'd share their special skills, like if they were a doctor or a huntsman, and would make small groups behind the backs of the Japanese. It mostly was an attempt to survive longer together, and it was also to keep eachothers sanity up.

Japan actually never signed the Geneva Convention, pre-WWII. The Geneva Convention states how you must treat prisoners of war, and Japan broke almost every rule in the act. There were food shipments to the POWs, but they were never handed out, as the officers often hid them and ate the rations for themselves. Along with no medical attention, and a severe lack of shelter, Japan was extremely brutal in their POW camps and the Geneva Convention was not even considered.

(Image: An Australian intelligence officer POW about to get beheaded. This unfortunately was a common way of killing POWs.)

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What did the captives do and was it inhumane?

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What did the captives do and was it inhumane?

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During WW2, Japan captured as many as 350,000 prisoners of war. Almost all of them were forced to do hard labour, unpaid and unsanitary. Some examples of labour activities the POWs did was transfer coal from mining trucks onto boats, which covered them in black soot and destroyed their lungs. They also worked in steel and copper factories, and dug trenches in horrible conditions. It was definitely inhumane, as all workers didn’t get one cent of pay. They got a higher food ration, but it was still an extremely small amount, mostly only a cup of half-cooked rice. Over 40% of POWs died from the horrible conditions, which is horrific compared to Nazi Germany’s 1% of POW deaths. Labour was practically the only activity the POWs were allowed to do, and most of it was extremely hard work. Mining companies took advantage of the free labour, and POWs were commonly forced into mines for work, unpaid still, and many died in these mines. If a POW was unable to work due to an illness, their food ration was cut. If a POW failed to complete their work, they were punished severely. The captives worked an excruciatingly long day, and they were never allowed breaks, nor were they given any praise or pay for their work. It was truly a horrible slave labour practice, in my opinion any many others. This is also one of the reasons Japan was considered a horrible country pre-WWII.

Captives were often forced to partake in random activities, all to the amusement of the Japanese soldiers. Things like a running contest in Zamperini's case, an olympic runner captured and almost killed from the bad conditions. It was never fair, as the POWs were practically skeletons, and yet they were expected to keep pace with a hardened soldier. Of course, the punishments were always brutal, like extensive whippings or getting beat to near death or even to death by an officer.

(Image: POW's being forced to carry heavy bags for hours)

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Did the staff workers of the camps get punished or caught after the war ended? What happened to them?

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Did the staff workers of the camps get punished or caught after the war ended? What happened to them?

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Directly after WWII, many POW camps still stayed in service, and the POWs in them didn’t know of the war’s end until after the US started to drop supplies into POW camps. A while after the end of the war, POW camps started to shut down finally, with the officers in them taking their leave. However, Japan knew that what they were doing had extremely high consequences, so when they surrendered to the US, they ordered a nation-wide massacre of all the remaining POWs. They also destroyed all the documents they could, which wasn’t much as Japan didn’t keep many records of their doings during WWII.  Some brutal officers, that punished many POWs severely, were arrested soon after, and were put on trial for several warcrimes. After the US took control of Japan temporarily, they put out a search for all of the most brutal officers, like Mutsuhiro Watanabe, who was a well-known officer in the camps. He punished and nearly killed POWs to a terrifying degree, yet managed to evade arrest until 1952 when the charges were dropped.

Companies that used the space labour to their advantage were also beginning to get prosecuted. Recently, former-POWs are starting to request apologies and compensations from the Japanese companies who still stand today, and many of them refuse to even respond to these requests. They abused and used the POWs during WWII to a slave degree, and many prisoners were scarred from the back-breaking labour. Now, they are refusing to even speak to public outcry, and the Japanese government is not doing much to help the POWs gain compensation for all their unpaid labour. They’re reluctant on giving even slight pay to all of those unpaid slave workers. As with the former camp officers, many have died either in prison or at home, and some are even alive to this day. However, some say they do not regret their choices, and refuse to even talk to the former POWs they enslaved.

Japan, today, isn’t nearly as bad as they were in WWII. However, there still are companies who used the POWs standing today, and much like the rest of the country, they are starting to refuse the camps were even real. Despite all the slave labour and workers they transported, and the thousands they killed from horrible conditions, they think they can forget it and brush it off. Which is clearly not the case for many former POWs or children of said prisoners, requesting apologies from across the world, from many sides. And Japan is still not responding.

(Video: The first televised interview of Mutsuhiro Watanabe, explaining how the violent actions he presented was necessary to ‘sustain a community life’.)

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Mutsuhiro "The Bird" Watanabe Interview 渡辺 睦裕（ワタナベ・ムツヒロ）

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This song is one of the ones I chose to represent the will to live the POWs had. Many captives were beaten and tortured to the point where they went insane, and eventually some even killed themselves from insanity. However, a lot of POWs followed the word of God, and actually relied on him to keep them sane, singing prayers and scriptures they had learned in Sunday school, which helped keep their spirits high. This song represents the power they had to keep going through the torture, and eventually push through in the end.

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'More Than Conquerors" from Rend Collective (OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO)

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(contains violence)

This clip is from the movie about the book Unbroken, explaining Louis Zamperini’s experience as a POW, under the power of Mutsuhiro Watanabe, one of the most brutal officers of the POW camps around Japan. He is teaching Louis a lesson of ‘respect’, by telling each prisoner to punch him in the face as hard as they can. This shows the brutal torture the POWs had to go through if they didn’t follow orders, or did their labour effectively. Almost every prisoner of war would experience atleast some form of torture in the camps, and it just shows how brutal the officers were.

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Unbroken (8/10) Movie CLIP - Punch Him in the Face (2014) HD

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http://factsanddetails.com/asian/ca67/sub427/item2531.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33931660

https://www.historyonthenet.com/world-war-two-japanese-pow-camps

A book about a POW's experience
https://www.amazon.ca/Unbroken-World-Survival-Resilience-Redemption/dp/0812974492

https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/pow/pow-jap.html

https://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/prisoners-of-war-of-the-japanese-1939-1945

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2007/05/29/issues/aso-minings-pow-labor-the-evidence/#.Xbb9GSUTHDs

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/time.com/3334677/pow-world-war-two-usa-japan/%3famp=true